Our Consulting Biases — How We Work With Our Clients

The following are some of the principles that guide our work or characteristics that define our approach to a consulting relationship.

Clear, Measurable Outcomes: We want to clarify objectives at the beginning of a consulting engagement. What are your desired outcomes? How would you like things to be different? How will you know we’ve been successful? We our progress against business metrics and link everything back to your strategic objectives.

Diagnosis Precedes Change: We want to have a good understanding of the workings of your organization before proceeding with change. This ensures that changes correct what is not working while preserving what is working.

Comprehensive, Systems Approach to Change: We look at an organization as a whole system. (See our transformation model.) Our methods cut across boundaries, systems and hierarchy to view all organizational life as a synchronized whole rather than in a fragmented way.

You are the Driver: You are the experts in your business and will make the critical decisions for your organization. Our role is provide you with the methodologies and facilitate the process by which that happens.

Respect the Relationship: We want to design a relationship that is respectful, safe, confidential, honest, and accountable. Our intent is to strengthen and support you in the fulfillment of your role and accomplishment of your vision.

The Role of Trust. We believe that trust is a critical element of organizational life. We want to help you learn to talk openly, resolve conflicts, and create a positive culture in which people care about their work and want to contribute to the best of their abilities.

Preserving/Building Culture: People do the work of the organization and are, ultimately, responsible for its success. Our change initiatives are not only about processes, technology, and systems, but also creating a culture in which your employees think and act like true partners in your business.

Structured Methods: You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We’ve created methodologies and processes related to leadership, individual, and organizational assessment, strategic planning, redesign, etc., which have been tested and refined with hundreds of organizations.

Written Materials: We have documented consulting processes, from our work with dozens of companies over the last 20 years and provide written materials for our training and many of our consulting interventions. These are resources that you can use in similar projects in the future.

Depth: We understand people and group dynamics and facilitate deep and sensitive work at the personal and interpersonal as well as organizational level.

Personal Touch: We are small and so clients will work with a principle consultant throughout a project, which facilitates continuity, trust, accountability and a responsive working relationship.

From Chaos to High Performance. We continually keep in mind the three stages of organizational development. Where are you along this continuum? How we work together will be influenced by whether you are in Chaos, Stability, or High Performance.

Frame-Breaking Change: Rather than incrementally tweaking or building upon the existing organization, our organizational design methodologies usually result in big improvements in productivity, quality, customer service, cycle times, and quality of work life.

Organizational Design

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Testimonials

"Our site modification team finished the contract ahead of schedule and $2M under budget and achieved outstanding customer quality ratings. They improved customer relations, implemented self-directed work teams and had employees training employees in team skills with the full and enthusiastic support of the UAW Union. Within one year, they were selected as the 'Outstanding Team' of the year in the entire Rockwell organization."